The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May

Doth every beast keep holiday;
Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd boy!

Ye blest Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning

This sweet May-morning;

And the children are culling

On every side

In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

-But there's a tree, of many, one,

A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;

The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a mother's mind And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can

To make her foster-child, her inmate, man,

Forget the glories he hath known. And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,

Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: -Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprized:

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor man nor boy

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence in a season of calm weather

Tho inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither

And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then, sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We, in thought, will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What tho the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,

Tho nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Mountains, Meadows, Hills and Groves,
Think not of any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway:

I love the brooks which down their channels fret
Even more than when I tript lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

THE DAY IS DONE 1

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me That my soul can not resist :

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.